


A Distinct Lack of Cold Water

by captainofthefallen



Category: Pillars of Eternity
Genre: Dreams, F/M, I know I keep bringing those up but I love them, Nightmares, Twin Elms, lovers' rings, mutual pining (background)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 15:22:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11854359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainofthefallen/pseuds/captainofthefallen
Summary: My take on that one conversation you have with Edér towards the end of the game when you've been having your creepy dreams and he gets worried and it destroyed all five of my feelings.





	A Distinct Lack of Cold Water

She never remembered things in her sleep. New memories always came when she was conscious, with one notable exception--in the ducal palace, when Thaos had fled. She had awoken to Edér threatening to throw water on her if she didn't wake up, though his gentle touch belied his words.

In her dreams, though, it was always the voices. The voices of what must have been her past life--one specific past life, she was learning. A life in which she had followed Thaos without question as an Inquisitor. A life in which she had loved a woman named Iovara. A woman who had--Thaos claimed--turned against the gods.

A life in which she had sent countless 'heretics' to face fates worse than death at Thaos' hands.

The voices echoed. Thaos' above all, but along with it, one she was now almost certain was Iovara's. And then, intermixed with the rest of them, one she somehow knew was her own. Stoic, emotionless. Cold as frozen steel as she condemned person after person to the iron wheel she had witnessed in her one sleeping vision.

She saw what she always saw--pillars of adra, rising in the distance across what looked like a surface made of the night's sky. But the voices tormented her. Screamed and whispered and shouted and spoke until she wanted to scream herself from the weight of it all. And every night it grew worse. With every vision, more seemed to join the fray.

She tried to hide her exhaustion. The others didn't need their fearless leader collapsing in the middle of their important quest to save the world. But that was where they were wrong. She wasn't fearless. Far from it.

She was fucking terrified.

Who wouldn't be, after all? If, every night as they tried to sleep, they were presented with irrefutable proof of their own looming insanity?

So she hid it. The quest alone was burden enough, and they all had problems of their own to deal with. They didn't need the additional worry of her imminent madness.

_The pillars of adra loom ever closer. The strongest of the voices seem to emanate from them. Iovara, whispering gentle words of comfort. Thaos, condemning countless heretics to the Wheel--and the wheel. And I helped him. I helped him torture and kill hundreds. For what? I don't know. What is their heresy? Is that the question? Is that why I'm slowly losing my mind? And as Thaos' voice echoes above it all, as it did in the palace-- "Shall I end it for you?"--my growing fear is that when I meet him… I will beg for the end._

_"Shall I end it for you?"_

_“Hey!”_

_Wait… that wasn't right._

_That wasn't his voice._

"Hey! _Hey!"_ She woke at last with a jolt and a sharp intake of breath, sitting bolt upright and bashing her head against someone else's. He gave a small grunt of pain but did nothing else to acknowledge the injury, leaning back towards her immediately and looking into her face. "Thought you might never wake up," he said, and from the look in his eyes she could tell he was only half joking. "I just about punched you to snap you out of it. You were sayin' things, but no words I ever heard."

"What happened to the bucket of cold water?" she asked, still slightly breathless, a weak attempt to deflect his concern.

Edér shrugged, turning his face away in a poor attempt to hide his smile. Then he looked back, the smile slowly fading from his face. "Had me worried there," he said.

She gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile. "Just a nightmare. I'll be all right."

"Don't do that." He frowned, taking her hands in his, concern deepening the lines of his face. "You don't have to face everything by yourself." He held up his hand, still linked with hers, where the silver ring still sat, glinting innocuously in the dim light. "Maybe I can't read souls like you, but I can feel your strength. Even without that, I know you. Please. Let me help you."

She looked away, unable to bear the intensity of his gaze. _Don't do this,_ she thought, wishing with all her might that she could say it aloud. _All I can do is leave you._

"It's going," she heard herself say. "My mind. Every night the whispers get worse. I've started seeing flashes more and more--torture, people, burning at the stake, and every time I see it I'm reminded that _I did this…_ "

One of his hands released hers, tipped her chin up to look at him. "You didn't," he said firmly, with so much conviction that she almost-- _almost_ \--believed him.

She looked away again, her eyes falling closed, wishing for nothing more fervently than a good night's sleep.

His hand cupped her jaw, and she leaned into it almost subconsciously. He took the weight of her head and supported it without a word. "You need to rest," he said. "Folks don't last long without sleep."

She sighed a little. "You're right about that."

"How can I help?" he asked.

She was fully prepared to tell him there was nothing that could be done, that he'd be better off just going back to bed and ensuring he was rested, but the words never quite made it to her mouth. Instead she said, "Just… stay with me. Talk to me. I think… it might help."

Without a word, he shifted, laying her back down on the bed and pulling up a chair beside her.

The voices weren't gone, but with his distinguishable among them, she found more rest than she had in weeks.


End file.
